Video games killed the TV star. Left to right … Fionn Whitehead, Will Poulter and Asim Chaudhry in Bandersnatch.
Photograph: Netflix/Black Mirror

Charlie Brooker has ruined television. The TV landscape is already so absurdly cluttered that people rarely watch the same shows as each other any more. But now there’s an interactive Black Mirror, Bandersnatch, that unfolds according to the viewer’s wishes. You know what this means? It means that we aren’t even watching the same episode as each other, even when we’re literally watching the same episode as each other. Thanks a lot.

Interactive narratives aren’t exactly new. John Hurt made an interactive erotic thriller called Tender Loving Care almost 20 years ago, and more recently Netflix experimented with an interactive Puss In Boots episode, but there’s something fitting about Black Mirror being the show that shoves the form into the mainstream.

Because nobody can quite agree on Black Mirror, can they? Where some see bleak social commentary, others just see nastiness for the sake of it. And since the anthology format allows for a range of tones, everyone gets to have their favourite episode style; you might enjoy a warm-hearted San Junipero affair or, if you’re an insane psychopath, you might prefer something like Crocodile.

Bandersnatch is a masterpiece of sophistication. From a user viewpoint, it is seamless.

But Bandersnatch has the potential to solve everything. By operating around a branching narrative, allowing viewers to choose the direction of the story at intermittent waypoints, you can theoretically create your ideal Black Mirror. Choose the most disastrous option at every turn and you’ll theoretically end up with the grimmest, most nihilistic Black Mirror ever; but let a little sunshine in now and again and you might miraculously end up with something that doesn’t make you want to drown yourself in a bath.

Fortunately, it works. Bandersnatch is a masterpiece of sophistication. From a user viewpoint, it is seamless. When options present themselves (you chose with a click of your mouse), there’s no lag or buffering to endure. If you don’t make a choice, Netflix makes it for you. As such, it is identical to watching a film. As an experience, it’s remarkable.

Even more remarkable, though, is the ambition of storytelling on display. Very loosely based on a real-life unreleased game also called Bandersnatch (completists might like to watch the BBC documentary about that game’s failure), it’s essentially the story of one man’s slow unravelling. In the Black Mirror universe, Bandersnatch is the name of a Choose Your Own Adventure book so complex that it drove its author to murder. When a 21-year-old named Stefan chooses to adapt the book into a video game, he also loses his grasp of reality.

But the genius of Bandersnatch is that it’s ultimately a critique of interactivity. During the film, Stefan doesn’t just start to question his free will when he feels that someone else (you) is making his decisions for him, but he ultimately rubs up against the constraints of the binary choices that he’s presented with. In the space of 90 minutes, Brooker has popularised a new form of storytelling, then identified its tropes and dismantled them one by one. In this regard, Bandersnatch is legitimately breathtaking.

It’s also incredibly funny at times. Without spoiling too much, at one point you’ll be given the choice to click on a very familiar logo, which sends the whole film down a wormhole of genuine, incredible, self-referential battiness. The moment is a cul-de-sac, so it has no real bearing on the end of the story, but after several years of wallowing in increasingly dour parables, it’s refreshing to see Brooker indulge in his sillier side.

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There are apparently five endings to Bandersnatch, to which I think I’ve seen three or four. One ending is bleak. One is hilarious. One is abrupt and creepy. You can speed through the episode in less than 40 minutes, or splash around and take closer to two hours. By the time I’d finished exploring I was left with a profound feeling of satisfaction, as if Black Mirror had prodded me towards the ending it felt was best. Which makes sense because, after all, free will is an illusion.

So that’s what happens in Bandersnatch. Or at least that’s what happens in the version of Bandersnatch that I experienced. Yours might be completely different. Which makes this whole review redundant, really. Charlie Brooker has ruined television criticism, too.